Doing work with handwriting helps in learning the material. I don't know why that works, but my experience (and others') clearly shows it does.

And I strongly disagree.

The moment I have to write stuff down my focus is gone and I might as well be taking a nap.

And having to read my own handwriting assures I’ll never look at that page, again.

Different strokes

Do you acknowledge you're a minority?

I detest writing and have terrible handwriting but have seen first hand that typing or just listening is not as effective. In grad school I sucked it up and just typed up my handwritten notes so they were searchable when I actually needed them to be.

But writing by hand and just reading them over was usually enough.

Having to write stuff down made it impossible for me to pay attention to the lecture. But I was definitely more likely to remember what I did write down. Bit of a catch 22

Are you sure this is a permanent fact about you and not something that would change if it became habitual?

I mean, I have no way of knowing if it's the former or the latter. But I've been noticing recently when people treat their traits as changeable and when they treat them as core to their being. I don't really have any faith that, in most cases, one can differentiate the two as much as one thinks one can.

Same here, apparently it’s a major ADHD thing. I can take notes or I can pay attention and try to understand, but I can’t do both, you have to pick one (a calculus teacher in high school was very insistent that constant note taking for her rapid-fire example-heaving lectures was required, so… yeah I didn’t have a clue WTF we’d even been covering after each of those classes, though I’d have lots of notes!)

That's been my experience as well. I'm just curious about cursive writing specifically.

point taken. I learned to take notes by printing by hand, as my cursive was illegible.

I'm hopeless at pure cursive writing. My default writing is a joined-up-ish kind of printing. Writing using it works really well for retaining information for me.

It's been clearly shown to be beneficial for some people. I too happen to be one of them.

For others, hearing stuff (and saying stuff) out loud is more useful. I had a friend who'd make nonsense songs of stuff to learn: just doggerel, but by singing it to himself when revising, he had a massive uptick in retention. He was so happy when he worked that out.

I imagine there might be other modes that work for other people too?

If I say "people have two legs", someone is bound to reply "My friend Bob has only one leg."

On average, people have slightly less than two legs.

However the average person has exactly two.

That's because "average" can mean either median, mean or mode depending on context.

I might just be stretching my point... but if I remember Treasure Island (1883) correctly, the mean person had only one leg.

Sorry! I'll see myself out.

It helps with fine motor skills at a time that people are capable of learning them.

... And there are jobs that use those skills.

Correlation between handwriting, drawing skills and dental skills of junior dental students - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22269191/

My dentist, while teaching dentistry commented that if the student did not learn cursive in school, it takes them another 3-4 months of practice in order to acquire the fine motor control for holding dental instruments.

If anyone is interested, here is a link where you can download the study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221770027_Correlati...

I few interesting bits — it does involve cursive, but it's Arabic and it's graded on a rubric that includes things like "Presenting the beauty aspects of Arabic writing'. Also, given a sample of 71 students and a p<0.001 means the correlation coefficient only needs to be around 0.40 which means handwriting and drawing may only explain about 16% of the variance of these dental skills. That's not nothing, but given the subjective nature of the test and the confounders (does this handwriting sample really measure motor skills or maybe it measures care and attention to detail, or conscientiousness), I'd be a little wary of using this to argue for education policy.

Still, glad you posted it and glad I read it. It interesting.

So the logical entailment here is what? That everyone should have the dexterity of a dental surgeon so we can save the 7000 dental surgeons 3 months of training? Am I missing something?

Learning cursive won't automatically give you the dexterity of a dental surgeon, that's just a silly conclusion you have drawn from one example.

What is the downside of learning cursive?

I learned cursive in elementary school. For me the downside is that it's a waste of time and attention that could be spent on something else.

Developing fine motor control for cursive is actually improving cerebellar function. It turns out that the cerebellum is a general "organ" for fine control and synchronization of neural function across the brain. It is implicated in:

* Reading and responding to other people's emotions. * Emotional regulation. * Generalized sequencing. * Musical ability. * Counting. * Following patterns.

While you may see it as a waste, you may very well have benefited in significant ways from learning it at a young age.

It's hard for me to imagine how fine motor control applies to cursive in a way that doesn't apply to block writing.

One kid in my school didn't write cursive, but wrote block letters so beautifully, it looked near printed. And he was probably faster than most. He also played the piano since young age and is a professional pianist now, so yeah :)

So I would totally put it on the same level, theoretically. That is, you can write block letters with just as much skill and care as you can cursive, I think. Just like you can write cursive by just doing squiggly lines (as doctors write prescriptions).

I'm definitely not a pro, but I've been actively playing piano for forty years now for whatever that might be worth.

Sounds like you remember that person because they were exceptional. That doesn't make them a good argument for the general case.

Smooth curving lines connecting into each other are very different from intersecting straight lines with clear stopping and starting points.

If everything is just extremes, then acknowledge that the other extreme then is everybody sitting on their ass watching "Ow! My balls!", clad in advertisements. And given the choice between those two worlds, yes, everybody should have the dexterity of a surgeon.

It's a matter of spending 200 to 300 hours of practice on it.

Learning cursive (and other skills) in school is about trying to make sure opportunities for professions are not excluded.

While cursive is not a foundational skill (compare math and reading), it is a way to train fine motor control.

And it's not only the dental surgeons, but also dental hygienists... and doctors and surgeons (anyone who uses a scalpel). One could also look at various craftsmen such as jewelers and watchmakers.

Learning cursive is a way to make sure that we don't exclude people at an early age from professions that they might want to go into.

I just like it, the same way you hate it. If disliking it is valid, surely so is liking it?

Not disagreeing with your opinion, just answering your question:

The big advantage of writing in cursive is speed and less muscle fatigue. Writing in cursive requires far less lifts of the pen and far less tiny movements... a reasonable cursive script (Spencerian, but with a little less flourish) is quite easy to write legibly and with speed, with just a little practice.

The junk that used to be taught in US schools (a type of Palmer cursive) it not fun to read or write.

BUT, the above analysis only really applies to people who want to write, and want to write a lot.

Couldn't you make the argument that training the hands for more lifting and tiny movements has better long-term payoffs as that is also beneficial to many other tasks?

There are studies showing that cursive is better for some purposes: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... But the results are quite weak.

What's really important is handwriting itself. Block letters are honestly fine.

Writing in a good cursive (like the Spencerian script) is a bit faster and much easier on your hands, as you don't have to lift the pen as often. But that matters only when you need to write pages and pages of text.

My native language is Russian, and in Russian schools cursive was mandatory. Writing in block letters was seen as a sign of illiteracy.

I started learning English as a foreign language, and we didn't bother with cursive. So I kept writing in block letters for quite a while. I then started learning German, and our teacher taught us German cursive handwriting. I'm now using it for English as well :)

> Writing in block letters was seen as a sign of illiteracy

How interesting. I've always thought the cyrillic block letters look beautiful, whereas the cursive variant not so much. I learnt some russian and I've never bothered writing cursive because of this perception. Odd to realise now that the average russian seeing my writing would be dismissive instead of impressed!

Cyrillic block letters are mostly the same as Latin letters :)

> Odd to realise now that the average russian seeing my writing would be dismissive instead of impressed!

There's a HUGE difference between learning Russian as a native and as a foreign language. Especially if you can write! Russian spelling rules are quite opaque.

People will absolutely be impressed by your writing.